


Therapy

by glacis



Category: Highlander: The Series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, The Professionals, The Sentinel, X Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-29
Updated: 2010-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Musings of a muse - or, why fan fiction is cheaper than therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Therapy

The bar is a little smoky, but not enough to obliterate the faces wandering in from the harsh light outside the heavy door. Gentle blues fill the air, as a man on a stool with a guitar in his hands tells tales of love, and loss, and lightning striking twice. The dim spot picks out the silver in his hair, in his beard, the flash of his fingers, the glint in his eye. It's sad, 'cause it's the blues, and it always starts out that way. Where we take it from there, he sang out softly, what we make of it here, that's the way it ends, and that's up to us.

Well, me, actually. I sit propping up the bar, running my fingers over the smooth, curving wood. This is my local, the place where I hang, where my friends can always find me, and usually do. Joe's a friend of mine, one of the best, the very best kind. He listens when I need it, and he tells me what I need to hear, whether it's what I want to hear or not.

Usually not.

But that's what Joe's is for, all those things I don’t want to hear, out there. Where the light is.

It's crowded tonight. In the far corner, I see two blond heads, as unalike as they can be. A Russian transplant spying on behalf of the world, and a Chicago detective living someone else's life, wearing someone else's name. Next to them, a full table. A seeker of truth, and the truth he's seeking, battered as it undoubtedly is, in a leather jacket and stubble. Opposites, of course, two names for the same gemstone. To their right, a big man with a perpetual headache -- it's loud in here, and even from here I can see his curly-headed little friend urging him to turn it down. Some people never learn, no matter how often they're told. Rounding out the group is a loner, of course, one of the sad ones. No one in his world who really understands, except, maybe, one, and he's leaving -- a cop a long way from Baltimore and an even longer way from peace.

The middle table's lively. Yet another short one with curls, or as close as no difference, an English doctor politician, another one with no one in his world he can make his own. And the mobile ghetto, dark and fair, dangerous men to look at, with their hard eyes and their hard bodies … but gentle with one another. Their own personal third wheel at the elbow, tall, sad, lost as are they all, but with a wicked sense of Irish humor when he's allowed to shine. To his right, a little bulldog, all spiky hair and big eyes and sultry mouth, wearing his authority with the ease of long practice. They're laughing, drinking, joking, including any who'll listen on the surface, but complete in themselves, the Brits.

The dark eyed ones are off in the other corner by themselves tonight. Brooding party, from the looks of it. The cop with the past, down from the Canadian north, missing both his lady and his man, the Mountie far from home and further still from resolution, although the blond is the way to go from where I'm sitting. A holdover from decades ago, a tall, dark eyed man with black hair and cream skin, smiling with his mouth, if not his eyes. The big man with the odd markings along his temple, sitting quietly, not drinking, just smiling occasionally, speaking softly. The slender one beside him, another doctor, but an explorer as well. To his right, another blond, this one lighting up the table with his smile, his teasing blue eyes, his energy. Life of the party, he can be, but with his own demons chasing him, always and only a step behind. His eyes are light on the surface, but as dark as the others when you take the time to look. And muffled in the hat and scarf beside him, knowing how he'd stand out even in the shadows otherwise, an alien friend, one of the few, holder of broken dreams and scattered secrets.

Behind the bar, Joe's friends, brothers, lovers, Immortal together, if they can just keep from killing one another long enough. A study in contrasts, tall and slender, stocky and broad, both dark eyed, holding secrets, moving with fluid and unnatural grace. I smile at the old one, with the face of a boy, and he pours me another, and I listen. Below the blues, I can make out their words.

I come here when I'm sad. Frustrated. Angry. Hurting. I listen to them, and they move me, and the furor calms. Not too much, never resolved, but enough to give me distance, a measure of objectivity, false comfort though it might be. A prism through which I can shatter reality, play with the pieces, get lost in the color, and return to the blinding glare of the sunlight a little refreshed. Joe's is a good place. A few people know it. Even fewer understand it. Most have never heard of it, and I like it that way. It's a private place, at times resembling a three ring circus, at times so empty it echoes. But it's a good place, in the end, because it's a gathering place, a place of power, a place of dreams.

They talk to me. Of course, they do, that's what they're here for. To say the things they couldn't say in their own worlds, someplace safe, someplace accepting.

"She's kidding, right?"

"Quiet, Tom, she's weaving words. You know better than interrupt her when she's waxing poetic."

"Or what, Chakotay?" "Yeah, what's she going to do to us?" "Hurt us?" "Play with our minds?" "Put us in anatomically impossible positions -" "-and make us love it?"

Wait a minute here. None of those positions are anatomically impossible. I do my research.

"Give us abusive childhoods?" "Turn us ALL into hookers?" "Beat us up?" "Kidnap us?"

Several voices in unison : "_Tie us up_??"

By now Joe has gotten on his sticks and wandered over to lean on the other side of the bar. Sidling up close, he whispers, "Looks like an uprising." I can't help but agree.

"I finally get some, a one-off at that, and what happens? UNinvited guests! And I lose out! As always!" Bayliss, with what sounds suspiciously like a whine in his voice. Hey, I gave him Blair. Most people would kill for a chance at that.

"Yeah, and they pretty much do. You'd hand me over to anybody, wouldn't you?" A disgusted snort from Sandburg. Well, no, pretty boy, I wouldn't, only those who wouldn't harm you. Much.

"Great," a moan from Mulder. "_MORE_ handcuffs."

"What are you bitching about?" And his other half. Funny, I never noticed just how nasty Krycek looks when he sneers like that. "I've been everything from a rapist to a clone. You just get emotionally tortured."

"And you get your pick," another country heard from. What was Mansfield's beef? I could've stuck him with Mac. Yuck. At least Mulder's pretty.

"Every show has to have a slut." Bodie, now. Sounding disappointed.

"Oh, well, mate, there's drawbacks to getting my share, you know." Doyle, even pissier than Bodie. "Least you don't have a background as a hooker/thief/runaway with a rotten memory."

"You, too?" Bashir stepping up to bat. No fair, he was my first. I almost feel betrayed, except, of course, he's right. "She has some real issues with identity and sexuality, doesn't she?"

"That's obvious, my dear doctor." Even muffled, Garak's drawl is unmistakable. "At least you get to work through yours. I'm stuck with a fifteen year old girl … and Odo."

Hey! Not my fault! That was _canon_, damnit! I got you two together!

"Once. Which is more than you ever managed with us." Go away, Chakotay. I tried, okay? I just can't help it. The thread between reality and fantasy with Tom is simply too thin.

"Didn't stop you from doing all sorts of nasty things to me in prison and then making me sing about them, in _French_, did it?" Wow. I had no idea Tom could whine like that. I'd be impressed if I wasn't so appalled.

"At least you got to deal with them." A soft, cultured voice, and big eyes staring at me accusingly through round glasses. Sorry, Balliol, one of these days, I promise. You're too cute not to do _something_ with you. "That's what you keep saying. Then you turn to … others." A sniff over his shoulder. Illya and Napolean grinning at me. It's Janis' fault. Forty three hours of sixties music and Illya in next to nothing -

"TIED UP!" Wow. Blair, Illya, Krycek, Mulder, Methos, Tom, Julian, Fraser, Doyle and Cade in unison. That's a hell of a choir.

"It's not worth complaining about." The voice of reason, compliments of the Boy Scout. Don't glare at me, Duncan, you're the one who wanted to cut your hair, I can't help it if it makes you look all of twelve. "She's going to do what she's going to do, and there's not a bloody thing we can do about it."

"Except relax, and live through it," Ellison's soft rumble. God, I like that man. Blair, now he's a sex toy with a brain I can torture for days, but the things I can do to Ellison's senses … a distinctly peeved growl around my ankles catches my attention and I look down. Oops. Better not gloat. Neither the panther nor the wolf is too happy with me since the last visit to the spirit plane.

Stepping over them, careful of tails, I dig in my pocket and pull out a quarter. Joe has to take breaks sometime, and he does have a jukebox, hidden where the casual passersby can't see. I scan the offerings quickly, then smile, dropping the coin in the slot and pushing the button firmly. Turning to view the assembled crowd, I smile brightly. I really do love them. And beneath the bitching, they know it. They never had it so good on screen. At least, with me, they get some. Usually.

"Thank you." And I mean it. "Thank you for acting out my frustrations and my anger, my fear and my oddball sense of humor. Thank you for being there for me. So I don't have to pay a professional!"

Then the music rips through the room, and the grumbling dies down. Now that everyone's in the middle of the room, the lads are seeing faces that usually keep to the shadows. To my utter delight, new connections form as interest lights up one face after another, in the most unusual ways and for the most unexpected people.

Tim is glasses to glasses with Balliol, talking about isolation, wondering about vacations into the other's universe. Something I may have to work on. After all, I don't want poor Peter to always be the groomsman, never the husband. Or however that would be said.

Fraser and Ellison are bonding in a corner about tasting disgusting things, one on purpose, the other by accident … although the jury's still out on that one. Maybe Blair really did want to see how sour milk impacted hyperactive taste buds. Speaking of whom, Blair's doing some fieldwork with Garak and Julian, peppering them with questions as fast as he can talk, which is pretty damned fast.

Mulder has Methos cornered, going on about that story that I will eventually finish, if I can ever find the file. I told them, when the hard drive crashed it ate it, but Mulder just told me it was a lousy excuse and Methos kept muttering about back-ups and giving me significant looks.

Krycek and Kowalski are commiserating about long term deep cover, although I'm not sure they both mean quite the same thing. Mansfield is tossing in the odd question every now and then, but he keeps looking at Alex. This could be scary.

Illya and Paris are talking about cars, not a surprise, and MacLeod and Bodie are comparing Sensei. Murph's watching them both like a starving man at a banquet. I've got to get that boy laid more often.

Speaking of which, Cade's got Doyle off to himself, and they're both shooting Balliol the strangest, most calculating looks. Wouldn't that be one hell of a menage a trois … yet another one somebody's going to tell me I can't do, and that will be that. Another angst fest. Probably with blood and death, and definitely bending the laws of space and time.

Which brings me to Napoleon and Chakotay, sitting there, trying to out-suave one another. There are days when I really wonder about these guys …

A glass lands in front of my nose with a solid clink, and Joe reaches over to push another quarter into the jukebox. "They're just getting into the dance," he grins, and I can't help but grin back. "Be a shame to stop the music now when it's just getting hot."

Picking up my drink, I raise it to salute him, and he lifts his own to meet it in a toast. "Here's to the endless possibilities," I smile. "Of life's little mysteries," he concludes.

It's just the beginning.


End file.
